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The possibility to add background music with the help of SSML

See this example
https://gist.github.com/silvolu/63074e8fac76c615746f534f59f28e5f#file-media-example2-xml

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Alexey Vidanov shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

13 comments

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  • Joseph Mateo commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I'm surprised that this wasn't already a thing. I'm pretty sure that this would be a quality of life update for a lot of skills if the folks over at Amazon choose to follow up on this.

  • Sensel commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I want to vote this one down. Background music makes using a skill harder and annoying. Not to mention, harder for those with moderate to severe hearing loss and keeps them from using your skill.
    Best to keep music short and sweet and only at the opening of the skill. Then, no more repeating of music, which you may love but other may really hate. Then, you loose the customer.

  • Jannik K. commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Is there an update on this one? I really need to do this to make my skill work?

  • Andrew Siwka commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I would also love this!

    Currently for my games I pre-record a voice artist speaking the instruction, then edit that into the background music mp3 - I then play that with SSML.

    The issue is that I have to pre-record every possible Alexa response - not the end of the world when I know what she should be saying.

    Background music would be great, as my current method can be tricky if my mp3's don't seamlessly link.

  • Jannik K. commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I am creating a skill (a game), where Alexa has to speak and between breaks, where the players need to do an activity, it should NOT be silence. Silence would be gamebreaking.

    One thing I guess could do is:
    1. Speak instructions.
    2. Play mp3 for 3-10 seconds
    3. Give another instruction
    4. Play mp3 for 3-10 seconds.

    But its really not great and I dont like it at all...

    It would be cool to have something like background music, where a play is getting played during the whole procedure.

  • RayS commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Very desirable feature. I know some Amazon Alexa team members are able to do this in their skills, but it is very time consuming and difficult for external developers to achieve the same effect. The result is noticeable and not a very pleasing audio experience, I know, I have tried.
    If you have access to studio level recording equipment you could increase the quality, but you would need to create a skill with massive success just to cover the studio costs.

    Recently, my skill Star Commander was reviewed in one of the UK developer webinar sessions and this capability was mentioned as being something I should add to enhance the audio experience.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I was toying with seeing whether this was possible with audio player directives - but making it possible in SSML would indeed be awesome and convenient

  • Amir Harouni commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is a really great feature that can take the user experience to a much higher level. Please add it.

  • John Carnell commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    A much needed function to create more professional sounding interactions not to mention for story use.

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